


A Hole in Time

by Minuial_Nuwing



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, M/M, Really warped reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-11 23:40:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1179318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minuial_Nuwing/pseuds/Minuial_Nuwing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gildor and Erestor find themselves in possession of a mysterious object that may hold the key to a series of unsolved incidents - or maybe just the key to more trouble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Hole in Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Glorfindel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glorfindel/gifts).



> Written for Glorfindel in the MSV 2014 swap in response to this request: _Erestor and Gildor; A modern day mystery story with a mysterious artefact and a timeslip to the past. The timeslip can be to any period in the past of your choosing._
> 
> The thing kind of got away from me, and in the final analysis I'm not sure it is at all what you had in mind when you wrote the request. But I hope you like it anyway, darling! *g*
> 
> Beta: Midnight Chaos (aka Dorkfish Girl)
> 
> ******************************

 

“Where did you get this?” Erestor demanded uneasily, turning the ribbed sphere over and over in his hands, searching for some mark, some hint to its age and provenance.  Because he had a sinking feeling that this very unusual, oddly unsettling object was much older and much more valuable than it had any right to be, considering the source.

The hollow-eyed young man who hoped to sell a hunk of pale gold glass for the price of his next fix – hell, maybe even his next _two_ fixes – shrugged with exaggerated nonchalance.  “Found it in the dumpster.” 

Erestor favored him with a look that had lacerated hardier souls.  “Right beside the Easter Bunny’s basket and Santa’s sack of gifts, no doubt.  Can we skip the crap and go straight to your version of the truth, Jase?  _Where did you get this?”_

 “I _did_ find it,” Jason insisted with the self-righteous outrage of a habitual liar being doubted when, for once, he is almost telling the truth. 

“Okay, you found it.  Where?”

“In Erik’s things,” Jason admitted grudgingly, naming another of the dozen or so almost-child addicts who haunted the waterfront, living in a city of cardboard and tents in one of the abandoned warehouses.  “I already knew it was there, see?  He showed me last time we, um, got together-“ Erestor nodded his understanding of the euphemism “-so I brought it to you.  I might as well get the good of it as anybody.  He _showed_ it to me.”

Erestor looked the glass sphere over again, then stared hard at Jason, as though trying to see into the boy’s mind.  “All right, you got it from Erik.  But does he know you are trying to sell it to me?”

“He don’t care now, Mister Ar.  He’s dead.”

“Excuse me?”

“Erik’s dead,” Jason repeated woodenly, an indecipherable grimace twisting his mouth.  “I got as much right to it as anybody.  We was friends.”

“Okay, Jase,” Erestor said, his voice gentling slightly.  “I believe you.“

“He was just dead, Mister Ar.  No blood or puke or nothing.  I found him on his blanket with that thing tucked up beside him.  He was all pale and grey and cold.  I tried to wake him up-”

 _“Jason,”_ Erestor interrupted firmly, stemming the flow of words and images before it could become a torrent.  The boy needed more help than he could get at the counter of a mostly-legal antique and pawn shop in a questionable neighborhood.  “I’ll give you $300 for it if you play by my rules.”

“Yeah?”

“We are going to walk down the street to the Center-“ Erestor cut off a looming protest with one quick lift of an eyebrow “-and you are going to talk to one of the counselors.  You are going to take the bed they offer you, and you are going to stay for at least three weeks, doing exactly what you are told and eating everything on your plate.  You do that and I’ll give you three hundred for that glass ball.  In the meantime, I’ll keep it safe for you.”

_“Mister Ar-“_

“Three hundred dollars, Jase,” Erestor repeated, slipping the sphere onto a shelf behind the counter.  Whatever happened, the child was not leaving the shop with such a macabre souvenir.  “A hundred a week.  You know I’m good for it.”

“All right,” Jason said finally, rubbing a hand across his too-bright eyes.  “I’m kinda hungry anyway.”

Flipping the sign in the window to ‘Closed’ before Jason could change his mind, Erestor locked up and they headed for the neighborhood Hope Center, where, after a skeletal retelling of the circumstances, he left the boy under Sister Maggie’s watchful eye.  He was so deep in thought when he arrived back at the shop that the turning of the handle barely registered, then Erestor pulled up short, his attention suddenly and completely focused on the unexpected give of the door. 

The extremely expensive, electronically keyed deadbolt that had been installed on the recommendation of a highly-successful-but-retired thief was no longer engaged.

In an instant Erestor’s knife was in his hand and he cautiously pushed the door open a few inches and slipped inside, thankful for the well-oiled hinges that kept his entry soundless. The shop was semi-dark and still, not even the creak of a floorboard or the flicker of a penlight betraying the intruder.  Standing very still, Erestor caught a faint whiff of sandalwood and cloves, the familiar scent overlaid with another, more elusive smell.  A moment later he was shoving the knife back into the sheath in his boot, reaching for the light switch beside the door.  “I could have killed you, you big idiot,” he said to the empty room, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. 

“Not if I disarmed you first,” Gildor said cheerfully, appearing from the deep shadows of the back room to meet Erestor halfway.  Several moments passed, filled only with the wet, clicking sounds of a long, unhurried kiss, before Gildor continued, his voice slightly rougher than before.   “Besides, I have more faith than that in your reflexes.”

“Mango,” Erestor said in what might have seemed a non sequitur to anyone but Gildor.  “Did you bring me one?  And what are you _wearing_?” 

Gildor grinned.  “I did, yes,” he replied, producing a mango from somewhere inside his voluminous awning striped overshirt.  “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?“

Erestor took the fruit and stepped back, his eyes running from the black leather cap that held Gildor’s tucked up braid, down the vertical red-and-white stripes of the shirt to distressed jeans and laced black boots.  “You look like a member of some motorcycle gang that collided with a circus tent and kept on going.  Other than that, nothing at all.”

“You owe that mango to this shirt, Res,” Gildor retorted, his eyes twinkling.  “I spent the last month delivering assorted fruit to very specific fruit stands in three cities for an importer commonly known as Guido’s Fresh Fruit, Ltd.”

“Found a new career path, have you?”  Erestor teased, taking a bite of the mango and licking the resultant juice off his palm.

“One warehouse, five trucks, keeps very strange hours for a purveyor of tropical fruit,” Gildor continued, not even acknowledging the barb, something Erestor knew from long experience was a Very Bad Sign.

“I take it that the department has not seen fit to withdraw employment, then?”

“You would hate me before the year was out if I were always underfoot,” Gildor retorted, stealing a quick bite of the mango.  “Absence and fonder hearts and all that.  We’ve had a lot of time to perfect the long distance thing.”

“I’d like to give familiarity and contempt a chance someday, Gil,” Erestor said wryly, tossing the remains of the fruit in the trash.  “But it will wait another three or four centuries, I suppose.”

“Something happening here?” Gildor asked, leaving the last comment hanging, whether by accident or intention.  “You don’t normally close up for lunch.”

“Not exactly,” Erestor replied enigmatically.  Slipping behind the counter, he produced the glass sphere from its hiding place.  “What do you think of this?”

“Strange,” Gildor offered, then he frowned, picking the seemingly-fragile object up and turning it gingerly, much as Erestor had done earlier.  “But oddly familiar.  I think I have seen something like it before.  In a photo, maybe.” 

“Memory failing, is it?”

Gildor ignored the half-hearted joke.  He ran a finger along one ridge and shivered, quickly putting the sphere back down on the foam padded tray.  “It is a little creepy, to be honest, but I couldn’t tell you why.  Where did you get it?”

“That is the _really_ strange part,” Erestor said slowly, then proceeded to repeat Jason’s story in its entirety.  “So I left him at the Center,” he concluded, “and that’s where we are.”

Gildor’s frown deepened and then vanished, his face becoming completely expressionless as the tale ended.  “I think I may know where I saw something like this before,” he said cautiously, “but I need to run uptown to make sure.”  He stripped off his cap and overshirt,  nodding toward the sphere.  “Cover it up and put it away, Res.  Don’t touch it directly.  I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“I could do without the spy show drama, you know,” Erestor said torn between irritation and amusement.  “It is my shop and my three hundred bucks-“  He stopped abruptly when he caught sight of Gildor’s face.  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“I am,” Gildor agreed, disappearing into the back room.  “I’ll be as quick as I can.” 

Erestor heard the door click shut, and a second later the muted rumble of Gildor’s treasured Harley swelled and then faded as he slipped from the alley into the backstreet to be absorbed by the passing traffic.  After a moment’s hesitation, Erestor picked up a polishing cloth and dropped it over the top of the tray containing the mysterious sphere, then tucked it back under the counter before going to flip the ‘Open’ sign back over in the window.

 Instead of settling down to price new inventory as he had planned, he found himself wandering aimlessly around the shop, idly rearranging small items on the shelves, his attention drawn again and again to the cloth-shrouded tray beneath the front counter.  Suddenly he closed the door of a glass-front cabinet with a snap and, before he could think better of it, moved to the counter and pulled out the sphere, flipping back the fabric to study the unusual object up close.  The air in the store seemed heavy, muting the street noise into a vague background buzz, a comforting sound that made Gildor’s words of caution seem far away and unimportant.  The pale gold glass almost seemed to glow in the dimly lit shop, and without conscious thought Erestor reached out and touched the shimmering surface.

Five minutes later he was gripping the counter, pale and trembling, his mind awhirl with jumbled images and sounds and sensations, and it was there that Gildor found him, still pale but composed, a second mug of brandy-spiked coffee in his hand and a thoughtful expression on his face. 

“Did you find what you were after?”  Erestor asked quietly and Gildor nodded, looking from the now-covered sphere to the bottle of brandy sitting at his lover’s elbow.

“I did.  And you, of course, ignored my warning completely.”

“Of course,” Erestor agreed, reaching for the large brown envelope Gildor was holding, pleased to note that his hands were once again steady.  “Let me see.”

Gildor held on.  “What happened?”

A shadow of tension returned to Erestor’s face.  “I’ll tell you in a minute,” he promised, “but let’s get the big reveal over first.  I want to know how badly I fucked up.”

Relenting, Gildor opened the envelope and shook out four pictures, sharply lit black and white photographs that Erestor recognized immediately for what they were.  Crime scene shots.  

“These were taken over a period of almost six months,” Gildor began, “in different parts of the city, by different photographers.  Suspicious deaths that in the end amounted to nothing, which was really the only known tie between them.  The only reason I ever heard about them at all is because one of the guys in question was known to be a small time trafficker,  and someone upstairs had the bright idea that they might have all been hits by a rival organization.”

Erestor glanced at the photographs, the detritus of someone’s life flash-lit for no reason.  One middle-class bedroom, one cluttered dining table, one high-end home office, and one shabby studio apartment of a kind common in the city’s poorer neighborhoods.  “I don’t understand-“

“Look closer,” Gildor said soberly.  “On the table, there…and in the floor beside the desk-“

“Oh, Valar,” Erestor breathed, glancing at Gildor before turning to the other photos, “and here, on the nightstand, and there, beside the couch.  There is a glass sphere in all of them.  Ours, or one just like it.”

Gildor nodded.  “Four deaths, Res, all of them unexplained and eventually ruled natural causes.” 

“Five, if you count Erik,” Erestor said hoarsely, “only Jase had already pinched the prize before the photographer came.”  He sighed.  “If they sent one at all.”

Gildor let the cynical remark pass.  “What happened when you touched it?  Why _did_ you touch it?”

“It called to me,” Erestor began, then shook his head, not satisfied with his own choice of words.  “That is not exactly accurate.  It preyed on my mind.  I had planned to price those keys I just bought, but I couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything.“

Gildor smiled slightly.  “And there was more at work than your usual all-consuming curiosity, Res?  On reflection?”

Erestor shot him a glare, but gave the question the consideration it deserved.  “I believe so, yes,” he said finally.  “I admit to a healthy streak of curiosity, but I am not routinely stupid.” 

“Implication not intended,” Gildor said, throwing up a placating hand.  His smile fading, he asked, “So what happened when you touched it?”

“I felt like someone was trying to suck me through a straw feet first,” Erestor said dryly, but the forced lightness of his tone neither fooled Gildor nor eased the remembered horror.

“Let’s sit down,” Gildor suggested, arming the deadbolt and flipping the sign in the window without waiting for an answer.  Grabbing the bottle of brandy, he led the way to the back room and the comfortable sofa that waited there.  “And then?” he prompted, flopping down on one end of the couch and opening his arms in invitation.

Erestor briefly considered taking offence, then decided he had certainly coddled Gildor through enough catastrophes, real and imagined, to be due a little comforting himself.  “Then,” he replied, settling himself into the offered space, “there was grey mist and echoing sounds.  It was cold, cold like I haven’t felt since-“ Erestor’s voice dwindled away and he pressed his back more tightly against Gildor’s chest, the slow, steady thump of his lover’s heart grounding in a way that nothing else in their ever-changing world could match.  Gildor nodded, his arms tightening, and Erestor shivered.  “It was the kind of cold you never forget.”

“Did you see anything?”

“It was like watching a movie at a hundred times the normal speed.  There were hundreds, even thousands of images, but they were just flickers of colored light, moving too fast for my eyes to focus, at least until the end.”  Erestor paused, restlessly twisting the wide gold-and-ruby cuff that circled his left wrist, and Gildor caught his hands, weaving their fingers together.

“What did you see at the end?”

 “Glaurung,” Erestor said quietly, turning his head to meet Gildor’s startled gaze.  “I was back at Nargothrond.”   

“Some sort of memory interaction, maybe?” Gildor mused, biting his lip. “But that doesn’t explain why the others died.  People don’t really scare to death all that easily.”

Erestor was already shaking his head before Gildor stopped speaking.  “No, you don’t understand.  I wasn’t remembering anything.  _I was back at Nargothrond_.”

“Res,” Gildor said carefully, “I know how overwhelming it was.  I was there, too.  It makes sense that your memories would be very vivid-“

Erestor sat up abruptly and turned to face his lover.  “And I am telling you that it was _more than a memory_ , Gildor,” he said slowly and distinctly, a muscle beginning to twitch in one cheek.  “Even the perfect memory of the elves does not willingly extend to recreating dragon-reek and the odor of burning flesh.”  Erestor swallowed hard.  “Besides, I could not have seen these sights back then.  I was assigned to the rearguard when Nargothrond fell.  I was charged with protecting the fleeing women and children from orcs, not battling Glaurung knife-to-claw.”  Gildor contented himself with a wary nod, and Erestor continued.  “I cannot explain it any more clearly.  I was _there_ – I could hear the screams and smell the stench – but, then, in another sense, I _wasn’t_ there.  Arrows flew through me, the dragon-fire did not char me, no one could see me.”  He looked away.  “Not even my father.”

“How did it end?”

Erestor shook his head.  “I don’t know.  It must have only lasted a matter of minutes, though it felt like forever.  I remember recoiling, physically and mentally, from the chaos, and then suddenly I was standing behind the counter, gasping for breath and shaking like a leaf.”

“Maybe you were startled into pulling your hand away from the thing.”

“Maybe,” Erestor agreed, shrugging slightly.  He reached for the brandy and, foregoing unnecessary niceties like a glass and heat, turned up the bottle and took a generous gulp before settling back against Gildor’s chest.  “But the more important question is what do we do now?”

Gildor grabbed the bottle and took his own swig before setting it safely back on the table.  “Now,” he drawled, wrapping arms and legs alike around Erestor, “now we devote a little time to a proper reunion.”

“ _Proper_ reunion,” Erestor parroted, the smile audible in his voice.  “What makes a reunion proper, Gil?  Frantic sex on a couch in the afternoon?”

“That, and pointless pillow talk,” Gildor amended, nuzzling his way through the heavy black curtain of Erestor’s hair to reach an ear.  “Don’t forget the banter.”

The drone of rush hour traffic had begun filtering through the darkened front room by the time Erestor nudged Gildor over far enough to reach up and pull down the small, intricately crocheted blanket that lay draped over the back of the sofa.  Spreading the antique cotton throw over their still-damp bodies, Erestor snickered.

“What?”

“I have a feeling that the genteel, grandmotherly lady who sold me this cozy might be appalled,” he said, pulling his fingers repeatedly through Gildor’s hair.  The braid long since undone, it hung in wild, sunlight-pale waves that gleamed even in the dim light of the back room.  Blinking away a sudden vision of pale gold glass, Erestor jerked his hand back as though scalded.

“Res?”

“What are we going to do with it?”

Gildor was silent for a long moment.  “Why do you suppose it chose to show you Nargothrond?”

“Who knows?” Erestor countered.  “Random selection?”

“Possibly,” Gildor conceded, but the idea obviously did not sit right, somehow.  “Can you remember noticing anything that might have suggested Nargothrond to your subconscious?  A sight, a smell, a sound – anything?”

Erestor shook his head slowly.  “I was distracted.  Just wandering around the shop.  I went and uncovered the tray on an impulse, and my only thoughts were of the sphere itself.  I remember it seemed to shimmer, even in the poor light.”  He grinned crookedly, “Which is what spooked me just now.  Your hair made me think of the blasted ball, all pale and golden and curving-“

“Like Glaurung,” Gildor interrupted quietly.  “Pale golden death, gleaming even in the clouds of ash.”

“Make that comparison again, and you will have to shave your head for the foreseeable future,” Erestor retorted dryly.  “But your point is taken.”

Gildor chuckled.  “Might be a good look for me, you know,” he teased, then pressed a lingering kiss to Erestor’s mouth before wiggling out of the tangle of arms and legs to tug his jeans on.

“Where are you going?”

“To get the damn thing, of course,” Gildor replied.  “Grab your pants, Res.  Travelling naked is out of fashion.”

By the time Erestor slipped into his clothes Gildor was back, carefully cradling the tray that contained the still-covered sphere.  “I have a theory,” he said, placing the tray on the table before dropping back down beside Erestor, “and I want to test it.”

 “You intend to play with that time-warp-in-a-ball, don’t you?”

“Not play with it, no,” Gildor protested.  “At least, not exactly.”

“You,” Erestor said succinctly, “really are insane.”  He shook his head.  “Why do I put up with you again?”

Gildor grinned.  “Because I’m irresistible?”

“Not even a little bit,” Erestor countered, but he was smiling, too.  “You are a pretty good lay, when you bother to stop by, though.”  His expression sobering, he reached over and touched Gildor’s arm.  “Which is one of the many reasons I don’t want you fooling with something we don’t understand.”

“No, listen, Res,” Gildor said earnestly, all teasing forgotten.  “I think I _do_ understand.  The kid carried it to the shop and nothing happened. We both touched it earlier and nothing happened, other than a passing feeling of unease.  You couldn’t contain your curiosity-“ Erestor spluttered but Gildor went on, anyway “-and you touched it again and got sucked through a straw into a pretty damn unpleasant place.”

“Your point?”

“My point is,” Gildor said gravely, “that if you hadn’t been so intent, so _interested_ , nothing would have happened.  Just like before.  Which means we can control it.  To an extent.”

“We could control Ereinion, to an extent,” Erestor retorted dryly, “and we both know how well that ended.”

Gildor cocked an eyebrow, and Erestor sighed.  “Exactly what are you planning?”

“I want to see if we can choose what it shows us.”

_“Us?”_

“Well, _me_ , to begin with, anyway,” Gildor clarified.  “I am going to see if I can wish myself to Oz, and I want you to spot me.”  Erestor opened his mouth to protest, but Gildor cut him off with a wave of the hand.  “You survived, Res, and you didn’t even know what was happening.  I don’t think I should have any problem, since I am forewarned, but,” he shrugged, “just in case.  Give me ten minutes.”

“And then kick the thing across the room, if necessary?”

“It might be safer to just remove my hand from the ball,” Gildor suggested, a grin twitching on his lips.  “Besides, you do have three hundred bucks invested in that piece of glass.”

“And I have three hundred centuries invested in you, Gildor Inglorion,” Erestor snapped, then he took a deep breath and bowed to the inevitable.  “Where are you thinking?”

“Imladris,” Gildor said promptly.  “Long history, odds are good that I will not drop into the middle of a full blown battle.”  He jerked the cover off the ball and reached toward it, meeting Erestor’s eyes.  “Wish me luck.”

“Luck,” Erestor said quietly, and then Gildor was gone.

And he _was_ gone, Erestor realized uneasily, sitting there in a rapidly darkening room with a glowing glass ball and the motionless body of his lover.  The only sign of life present was the barely perceptible rise and fall of Gildor’s chest – otherwise he might have been dead where he sat, his eyes fixed and staring, his hand cupped over the sphere, his skin rapidly cooling even in the warmth of the shop.  The minutes dragged by as Erestor’s attention flickered between the clock and Gildor, and he shifted restlessly as five minutes came and went without so much as a whisper or a twitch.

 Then, as suddenly as he had gone, Gildor was back, his eyes nearly as wide as his grin.  “It worked,” he said unevenly, shivering with cold.  Not trusting his voice and battling the urge to smack the smile off his lover’s face, Erestor contented himself with wrapping the throw around Gildor’s shoulders.  “I concentrated on that walled garden of Bri’s, and then-“ Gildor paused, and his amazement made Erestor smile, too, “and then I was _there_.  Just like that.”  He shook his head.  “It was summer, and I could smell the flowers, Res.  I could hear the leaves rustling, and see the birds, but I walked right through the hedge roses and didn’t get a scratch.”

“No physical presence?” Erestor suggested, handing Gildor the brandy bottle and moving to the makeshift counter that held the tea kettle and coffee press.  “Here, have a gulp, and I will make some coffee.  It really does help.”

Gildor nodded, sipping gratefully at the brandy.  “That has to be it.  Some other plane of existence, of travel.”  He fell silent, then, and Erestor left him to his musing.

“But if there is no physical presence, how do you explain the deaths, Gil?” Erestor prompted, offering a steaming mug of coffee.  “ Were they genuinely scared to death?”

“It looks like it,” Gildor admitted slowly, “but-“

“But it still feels wrong,” Erestor finished, blowing on his coffee.   “So how did you get back?  You didn’t pull away from the sphere.”

Gildor shrugged.  “I don’t know, exactly.  I just…just followed the path back, I guess.”  Seeing Erestor’s expression, he tried again.  “I was not conscious of this room, but I knew it existed, if that makes any sense.  I knew where I had come from, and when I looked, when I _felt_ – there was a tie, a connection to this place and time, and I just followed it back.”

“What now?”

“Now we turn on some lights,” Gildor replied, tossing the throw over the sofa back and rolling to his feet to pull the heavy curtain that separated the back room from the storefront before flipping on the electrified antique chandelier that hung in the otherwise simply furnished room.  The traffic noise had lessened, and Gildor went to check both doors, making sure the shop was locked up tight.  “What have you got to eat in here?  Or do we need to go out?”

“We can go on the way home,” Erestor said, rummaging through the cabinet and the mini-fridge to reappear with a loaf of crusty bread, a block of cheese, and a ball of butter.  “I assume you will be staying for a night or two?” he asked, handing Gildor the platter before settling back onto the couch.

“Or ten or twelve,” Gildor agreed, placing the food on the sofa between them and tucking into the bread hungrily.  “I am on the bench at the moment.”

“Then we had better run by the deli and the bakery, too,” Erestor said, watching the bread disappear at an alarming rate.  Snatching a couple of pieces for himself, he broke off a chunk of cheese and handed it to Gildor.  “Didn’t they feed you at that fruit company?”

Gildor decimated the cheese, then drained his coffee mug.  “Not nearly enough.”

Erestor shook his head in amusement, finishing off his own food before moving the platter to the side table.  “I repeat,” he said with a smile, “what now?”  At the devilish look on Gildor’s face he threw up a hand in warning.  “You’ve had your afternoon fuck, Gil.  I mean what do we do about our little portal to the past?”

“We take it for another spin,” Gidlor replied cheerfully, and Erestor lifted an eyebrow at him.

“We, meaning you and me?”

“Unless there is someone you had rather go with,” Gildor countered with a grin. 

“No one who is available,” Erestor allowed sardonically.  “Did you have a destination in mind?”

Gildor bit his lip thoughtfully.  “I want to see if it can show us something outside memory, Res.  Somewhere we have never been, but know enough about to focus on.”

“You still don’t believe it is real, do you?”

“I didn’t say that,” Gildor corrected gently.  “But I have memories of Imladris, just as you have memories of Nargothrond.  Not those memories, I know,” he added hastily, “but memories just the same.  Your mind could supply the sights and smells of the battle, just as mine could supply the scent of roses in a garden.”  He shrugged.  “I want a real test.  I want to see something that could not possibly come from my own memories.”

“Where?”

“You choose,” Gildor answered promptly

Erestor was silent for a long moment, then broke into a mischievous smile.  “Got it.”

“Yes?”

“Nassau,” Erestor said smugly.  “18th century Nassau.  I want to see pirates.”

“And assassins?” Gildor teased with a grin.  “You play way too many video games, Res.”

“Have to keep in mental shape, you know,” Erestor joked, “even if the glory days are behind us.”  He shot Gildor a challenging stare.  “That is my choice.  Nassau.”

“The pirate republic it is,” Gildor agreed with a sigh.  “Can you really picture it well enough to get us there?”

“I can.”

Settling back into the corner of the couch, Gildor opened his arms and patted the cushion between his legs.  Erestor grabbed the tray, careful not to touch the glass ball, and moved back against Gildor, gingerly placing the uncovered object on his own thighs, within reach of them both.  “You just think of sandy beaches and black flags,” he said, with more confidence, perhaps, than was warranted, “and I’ll do the rest.”  Weaving the fingers of his right hand with Gildor’s left, Erestor closed his eyes and pressed their joined hands to the sphere.  He felt Gildor grab his free hand and he returned the grip, holding to the connection as the only stable thing in a spinning world.  The icy cold closed around him again and he shivered, ignoring the flash of the flickering lights and colors that surrounded them, his attention focused on the bright sunlight directly ahead.

And then he was sitting on sand beside a wooden dock, the raucous call of sea birds echoing in his ears and the sharp smells of salty air and dirty dishwater vying for possession of his nose.  Gildor was, there, as well, his eyes closed and a repetitive chant of _‘black flags and sand, black flags and sand, black flags and sand’_ still falling silently from his lips.  Erestor closed his own eyes, concentrating, until he felt rather than saw a thread thinner than the finest hair connecting him to the back room of the shop and the deathly still form that  lingered there, then sighed with relief.  “I think we made it,” he whispered, though he wasn’t sure why he felt the need for quiet, when they were so obviously invisible to the group of men congregated less than fifty feet away.  Gildor opened his eyes, looked around and grinned broadly, and for the first time Erestor understood just how badly his lover had wanted to believe. 

“You look pretty solid to me,” Gildor said quietly, and Erestor had to agree.  There was no hint of transparency about either of them, yet they were completely hidden from the people who surrounded them.

“Dimensional planes, time-space continuums, something like that?” Erestor suggested, and though he spoke normally, no one looked their way.  “Let’s see what there is to see, shall we?”

“Lead on,” Gildor agreed cheerfully, and they set off up the slope, toward the wide dirt streets of the town.  Looking back over the harbor they counted three ships bobbing at the quay.  Two were large, with row upon row of cannons.  The third was smaller but sleek and sharp-nosed like a well-made dagger, and its central mast sported a second flag that flew below the skull and crossbones.  “Look at that,” he murmured, and Gildor followed his gaze to the brilliant copper-red pennant, its only insignia a white star set above three white diamonds.

“Nice looking craft.”

“It is,” Erestor agreed, turning back to the clapboard shops and mud-brick houses that made up the village proper.  More of habit than necessity they stayed to the edge of the streets and the shadows of the buildings, wandering from tavern to warehouse to dry-goods store as though they were in a particularly well done living museum.  The town’s inhabitants seemed no more and no less bloodthirsty than any other mortals, jesting at the bar becoming a fight in the street with the usual regularity, and the interactions between what passed for social classes in such a place more amiable than normally found in a modern city. 

They had rounded the town and were heading back toward the beach when Gildor’s keen eyes caught a coppery glint above the door of a cottage set up on a hill to the left of the mass of the buildings.  “There is that symbol again.  The captain’s house, perhaps?”

“Could be,” Erestor agreed.  “Or a meeting hall.  Do you want to take a look?”

Gildor nodded and led the way up the dirt path, studying the hewn stone cottage with interest.  “Some skill went into building this place, Res,” he said, his voice instinctively dropping to a whisper as they slipped through the open door into the house.  The front room was empty, but the murmur of voices from somewhere deeper in the cottage drew them forward to the large hall that ran the whole length of the building.  The un-glassed windows faced the sea, and their open shutters framed the setting sun as it dipped toward the horizon.  The golden light illuminated the man who stood before the windows, turning the heavy braids that trailed down his back to ropes of copper.   Then the man turned to speak to someone who had entered through another door, and Erestor felt as though the boundaries of reality had shattered and reformed.

The man’s right arm ended not in a hand, but in a sheath of heavily tooled leather.

“Maedhros,” he whispered weakly, and then far too many things happened at once, a jumble of disbelief and stark terror and dark humor that would take years to untangle.

“By the Valar!” Gildor whispered, attempting to move closer.  _“Ouch.”_

It was Maedhros, but it wasn’t, for this man had a scant red beard where smooth skin should have been, and while Erestor was trying desperately to make sense of it all, Gildor’s last comment finally registered.

“What did you say?”

“I said _ouch_ ,” Gildor grumbled, “and be glad I left it at that.”

“Why did you say ouch?” Erestor insisted, his face paling further.

“Because I smacked my elbow on that damn shelf, Res.”

“But you can’t feel anything here, remember?”

Gildor swallowed hard, realization dawning.  “I assure you, I felt it.”

“We have to get out of here, Gil,” Erestor said urgently. “This is what happened to the others, it has to be.  They stayed too long, they couldn’t find their way back – for some reason they took physical form in the other dimension.  We have to go back _right now_.”

“Did you hear something, boy?” not-quite-Maedhros asked suddenly, turning to look with unnerving speed toward the doorway where Erestor and Gildor stood.

Erestor closed his eyes and searched frantically for the thread that bound him to their own place and time, only to open them abruptly at the sound of a once-familiar voice. “I thought I saw a shadow by the door,” the newcomer said, stepping into full view with a pair of wicked looking knives already drawn, and Erestor gaped in amazement.

It was Elladan. 

‘ _Or Elrohir_ ,’ his subconscious tried to argue, but that gold earring and panther tattoo could only be Adan.  Rohir would have gone with a horse motif.  

“I am going to be skewered by Elrond’s son in a pirate’s cottage owned by Fëanor’s heir,”  Erestor muttered aloud, the ridiculousness of it all causing a bubble of laughter to rise in his chest.  “Like hell, I am,” he amended, grabbing Gildor’s arm and throwing them both after the rapidly disappearing thread that led past a gleaming blue light and back into the grey mist.  “Like _hell_.”

There was a shout of surprise from the cottage and then they were falling through the mist and slamming onto the couch with a painful ‘thump,’ shivering and gasping for enough breath to ease their pounding hearts.  Erestor shoved the glass sphere onto the table.  Gildor grabbed the blanket and wrapped it snugly around them both, his face buried in Erestor’s hair.  “Did you see it?” he asked finally, and Erestor nodded.

“I did.  On that shelf that cracked your funny bone.” 

“They’re lucky I wasn’t solid enough to break glass at the time.”

Erestor nodded silently. 

“Theirs was blue instead of gold,” Gildor offered, frowning thoughtfully.  “I wonder if that means something.”

“I think it means that we should worry about our own little hole-in-time and let Maedhros mind his,” Erestor retorted tiredly.  “What are we going to do with it, Gil?”

Gildor shrugged philosophically.  “What _can_ we do with it?”

“Destroy it?” Erestor suggested uncertainly.

“Could you?  Really?”

Erestor looked at the shimmering glass for a long moment, then shook his head slowly.  “No.”

Gildor smiled.  “Me, either.  Still too much of the adventurer in both of us.”

Erestor carefully covered the glass sphere and locked it in the wall safe.  “And we _did_ see pirates,” he said, the corners of his mouth twitching upward. 

“Elladan seems to have the makings of an assassin, too,” Gildor pointed out dryly, and Erestor snorted in amusement.

“No doubt he does,” Erestor agreed, moving toward the door.  “It’s a shame I’m not there to train him.”  He paused, looking at Gildor thoughtfully.  “If they have a sphere, and we have a sphere, do you suppose-“

Gildor flipped the light switch, plunging the room into darkness.  “Res,” he said firmly, “let’s go home.”

 

*~*~*~*~*

 


End file.
